Net to See .cornucopia of New .endings

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Net to See .cornucopia of New .endings

.com is set to get some .competition, as the net's governing body over names approved a plan Monday to radically expand the number of possible endings for web addresses.

Starting as early as November 2013, internet users will be able to visit sites with extensions such as .restaurant, .newyorkcity or .microsoft. As with .com, .org and the new popular .co, the dot will need to be preceded by a domain – such as timstacos.restaurant or xbox.microsoft.

Applications for the first round of new global Top Level Domains (gTLDS) begins Jan. 12, 2012 and will close on April 12, 2012. The application fee is $185,000, and there is a limit of 1,000 new gTLDs every year, which can be registered in any of the languages and scripts recogized by ICANN.

ICANN, the semi-independent board in charge of the net's naming and addressing system, approved the plan by a vote of 13 to 1, after three years of deliberation and public comment. ICANN says the move is intended to create more competition for names and to promote innovation.

"ICANN has opened the Internet's naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today's decision respects the rights of groups to create new top-level domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind," said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN, in a written statement.

While many see this as a way to unseat .com as the de facto internet standard, new top-level domains have a spotty history.

.info and .biz never took off and quickly became the net's low-rent zone, and to many users are synonymous with spam and scams. .mobi, another TLD, was intended to be where companies hosted their sites geared for mobile users – e.g. wired.mobi – but that didn't catch on either and sites simply now detect if a user is on a mobile phone and deliver them a phone optimized version.

However, .co, a top-level domain that belongs to Colombia, launched last year as a premier alternative to .com and has been very successful, especially with URL-shortening firms made popular by Twitter.

Verisign, the internet giant that helps run the net's virtual phonebook and administers .com, welcomed the change – seeing the new domains as a way to expand its business, rather than a threat to the .com franchise.

"The approval of the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook represents a landmark accomplishment for ICANN," said Pat Kane, senior vice president and general manager of Naming Services at Verisign in a written statement. “New gTLDs should provide additional choices for how organizations identify themselves on the Internet, and Verisign looks forward to leveraging our secure, stable infrastructure to provide back-end registry services to new gTLD applicants.”"

As for what kinds of new domains to expect, large global brands are likely to secure their domains. Canon has alreadly indicated it will apply for .canon. Expect Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google to do the same, even if they only use them to redirect traffic to their .com sites. They could also start offering domains to users so that you could be known online as jimmysmith.facebook, instead of facebook.com/jimmysmith.

Other possibilities include top-level domains for cities and regions so that restaurants like Mom's Café can be momscafe.seattle and possibly other TLDs for businesses such as .bank, which could be controlled to keep scammers from ever registering a fake site.

Photo: ICANN board members on stage at the Singapore meeting Monday where they approved a massive expansion of top-level domain names. Courtesy ICANN